A Framework For Occupation by Miles Dean

Miles Dean ADS5 / Camping in a High-Rise Research Atlas 11.06.20

A FRAMEWORK FOR OCCUPATION / AN IFRASTRUCTURE FOR INTERVENTION

1. ATLAS 2. SYSTEMS / STRUCTURES 4. 1:20 MODEL 5. LEARNING FROM CAMPSITES 6. INHABITATION / DIY 7. MID TERM EXAM 8. STRUCTURE & SERVICES 9. STATES OF CHANGE 10. CAMPING IN A HIGH RISE

This portfolio is a combination of both the research and design intentions that formed the body of work for ADS5 2019 / 2020. For the 2019 / 2020 year, ADS5 set about exploring the theme of “Camping in a High-Rise’. Reflecting on contemporary life as being defined by flexibility and temporarily when compared to more traditional modes of occupation or living, the studio argues: “architecture should not depend on program, simply because our life-styles and economic contexts are in a mode of constant change” To defend a building against an unpredictable future we searched for architectural qualities of generosity, simplicity and genericness. In ADS5 we worked from an Atlas of references and drew from and upon them in search of the previously mentioned characteristics. These early eperiments lead to the development of a 1:20 model that sought to define spatial, structural and formal characters in the absence of specualtion regarding program, context and user needs. From this point on, we would look to inhabit these spaces by using the experiences of camping as a design tool that encouraged us to look at materiality, practicilaity, economy of means and adaptabliity at the scale of the inhabitant.

1. ATLAS

Out of a selection of 50 ‘Atlas’ images, we began studying a selection references in order to develop a form and structure that had at its heart ideas of generosity, simplicity and genericness. Through restrained drawings in plan and section that were fast but intentional as well as seminars on the practice of working from an image towards an architecture we worked towards a design for a high rise building that we would later occupy. The omission of program, inhabitation or context were challenging. The absence of these parameters left room both physically and conceptually for an unadulterated exploration of spatial and structural qualities.

Bruther, Galeries Lafayette

# 16

Upon reflection it posed an interesting question not wholly explored at the time. How do you choose your references? For myself and others in the studio it was interesting to observe that whilst a number of references from the Atlas were studied we all subtly and maybe subversively introduced our own references that were useful to unlocking potential in our own agendas. I don’t think we we’re meant to have an personal agenda at this point however.

Mies, Office Building

Konrad Wachsmann, Aircraft Hangar

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Mies In Berlin

Brutherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Galerie Lafeyette in Paris

Konrad Wachsmannâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Hangar for USAF

2. SYSTEMS / STRUCTURES

Scaffolding is ubiquitous within urban contexts and was my not so secret link to my underlying ambition with this project. There was an idea that an unapologetic mimicry of its fabric, proportion and street facing dominance would position and defend the building against future changes in fashion and program. This for me gave me some peace throughout a process that designed a building without regard for its context or potential occupant. It left on me an impression of a building that could be built and unbuilt out of elements scaled to the human body.

Scaffolding_14

Scaffolding_08

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Scaffolding_32

I developed an appreciation of scaffolding for a few ways. As imagined in plan, scaffolding adds to a space a meter or so of perimeter to spaces or rooms that usually have no where to grow. Lacaton & Vassal caught on to and exploited this strategy when working to improve a large housing block in Bordeaux, France.

1:20 Test

Explorations in Plan

1:500 Massing Model

1:100 Plan

1:100 Elevation

1:100 Section

1:100 Plan

2. 1:20 MODEL

I challenged myself to make a model and by implication and building system that consisted of one structural language and one joint type. Maybe with some cast or carved structures, those that are monolithic, this isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t too much to write about. But as filigree construction? It became a really useful exercise in working between something complex and simple. From one point of view the model was very complex. It is made from 800m+ of 8x8mm pine section with an estimated 20,000+ 1.5mm holes drilled into it. I think I used over 3000 toothpics... That said, everything is part of a system and there is the simplicity. Each floor is repeated, there are toughly 80 columns, 20 short beams, 9 long beams, 42 ceiling posts and 2 floor slabs per floor. Each has holes drilled at set spacings of a consistent diameter. The only problem was that all tooth pics are not the same apparently.

1:20 Test

1:100 Typical Floor Plan

1:100 Floor / Ceiling Space Plan

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S E C TIO N 1:1 0 0

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Template for 1:20 Model

1:20 Model WIP

4. LEARNING FROM CAMPSITES The idea for term 2 was to park the model and begin thinking about modes of occupation explored through different interiors and programs. We were offered camping as a potentially interesting gateway into new modes of occupation that regrounded inhabitation around ideas of lightness, temporarily and community. I began to focus on the organizational and procedural qualities of camping as an activity. GA Cohen writes on the social dynamics of camping “there is no hierarchy among us; our common aim is that each of us should have a good time, doing, so far as possible, the things that he or she likes best,” I lifted this idea of camping as a communal activity into my architectural program and began exploring some of the practices that groups or individuals employ to inhabit space themselves. Depending on how far you push the idea of camping there is this extra level of work required that people don’t usually want to put up with in their day to day lives. You may have to source your own fuel. You may have to build your own accommodation, or at least assemble it with instructions. You may have to take your own waste with you. You could say that without these things are you even camping? There are interesting adjustments in responsibility, ability, autonomy, activity and collaboration that occur on a campsite and less so in our traditional homes. I wanted to explore and potentially exploit some of these social dynamics alongside the spatial environments that they happen within.

1:20 Model WIP

COMMUNITY + SPACE + AGENCY

Looking at the ubiquity of tents within camping was hard to avoid. Of course they can be mined for their innovative lightweight structures, waterproofed materials and compact assemblies but theres something interesting happening before you get down to all of that. Why do we use tents / go camping in the first place? More often than not, people camp on land that they would be unable to afford or do not have their own private access too. When a family chooses where to camp they will quietly be assessing potential spots against a few principles. Is it far enough away to feel like an adventure but close enough to access practically? Is it beautiful and does its environment offer me things that I cannot or do not find in my day to day world? I am I allowed to camp there? Does it have the amenities I require that I am not prepared to change my behavior for in order to access? I have grasped on to the idea of spatial sacrifices embodied by a tent sitting in an open field. We are happy to subject ourselves to noisy, self assembled, insecure tents in order to have access to things we do not normally have when we live/occupy somewhere. Looking back on my model I saw the potential to exploit this dynamic and create a kind of spatial trade-off within the program. What can we compact, condense and compartmentalize in order to create space, freedom, flexibility and pleasure? I wanted to combine the increased resourcefulness and autonomy of camping with a generous space that supported various occupations.

When I usually go camping there is a little more looking for a campsite than sometimes I would like as we dont either book campsites or like to stay in them much. Organised fun isnt that fun. This search is pretty imporant tough as to me camping can be explicitly creative. From choosing where to pitch the tent, which orinetation to set the opening at to where to hang your towels and where and how to cook food - you are constantly making decisions we do not usually make. They are made for us by architects. Various campsites have various levels of creativity expected. Sometimes the gas cooker is there waiting for you at the heart of a designated â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;dining areaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Sometimes there is a burnt out patch on the ground that suggests someone else had a fire here so maybe you should to. You are constantly taking cues from the context and living accordingly. If there are no cues and you are camping in effectively virgin territory then absolute creativity is required. You are the architect of your own world. You read the site, you organise the space around the activities you need to or perhaps . Different people can deal with a prefer to deal with different levels of autonomy / responsibility in this regard. In order to propose a mode of occupation that treated space with some ambiguity and speculation I needed to be aware of the role that hints, clues and explicit features play in determining how people use a space.

Campsite #3 in Tenerife

5. INHABITATION / DIY The idea at this stage was to do some translating between the campsite and the high-rise. How can I extract some of the unique qualities of campsite practices and bring them into a built environment? Why even bother? As a studio we explored the idea of a guest in order to develop approaches to the interior of our strucutures and the occupation of the space. We wanted to look at modes of inhabitation that had a relevance to contemporay trends in occupation that were less permanent than traitional models. As a society, we argued, we are more mobile than ever before. The world around us embeds a signicant degree of uncertainty into our habits and plans and this should be reflected in the spaces we inhabit. Many issues arise when the needs of an occupant and the provisions of a space do not align. It is my intention to close this gap by designing a space that can be adapted to the needs of a range of uses / occupatnts. An imporant and clear rhetoric emerged at this point - positioning the varying needs of the occupants as a constant and in turn looking towards the architecture for a solution in terms of meeting these needs. I began to look at the DIY movement that emerged out of the countercultrual revolution as a way of reclaiming agency in spatial design. Whilst this uncovered some really interesting approaches to themes i was exploring it became clear that i would need to navigate it carefully in order to avoid the situation where i relyed on potential occupants having both the will and the skill to contruct their own environments. This wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t meant to be about changing how people live but rather changing how buildings respond to how people live. This introduced a new dynamic to the design process. The act of spatial intervention.

The images on the previous page touch on an idea that i was very compelled by at one point and in many ways still am.How can we learn from how the bushman uses the reseources available in the forrest? I proposed that a comparitive context for a potential actor in the future of this building woulfd replace the forrest with the general DIY store or publicly accessible builders merchant. Could we use these readily available resrources to create interiors to suit whatever the current needs of the space were. I also looked at how the self-dependance of DIY architecture and furnitures results in a kind of practical simplicity and austerity. If you have to do something yourself (you’re not a professional bring paid to do it) then yes maybe you wont do such a good job but maybe you will also do only what is necessary. To accompany this shakey idea of simplicity in material I was also attracted to an idea of non-consumptive material use. Loosely inspired by responsible practices in natural environments, I wanted to see if I could create interiors that used but did not use up building components. The environmental benefits of this are obvious perhaps but it also suggests a way to navigate ideas of ownership, consumption and capital. If I used a 8x4 sheet of gyproc to make a wall but did not damage the sheet of Gyproc, I could effectively return it at something close to the cost of purchase.

James Hennessy’s variation on Victor Papanek’s “Living Cube”

Unknown Source

SomethingFantasticâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Post-Studio Tales Residency, Berlin.

Instructions for Enzo Mari’s chair from “autoprogettazione”

Enzo Mari Table

As part of our ill-fated Live Project we had a round table presentation from Russ Edwards, the design and technical director of Lendleaseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s residential arm. He presented to us lendlease position of all things resilience, design for disassembly, building lifespan and occupational systems. It reminded me of this phrase used by Intra-structures . In the context of my own project it made we look at the building through the hierarchy of elements in order to understand what bits are permanent if any and what bits change or are more flexible. In many ways I think the way this issue was dealt with by ADS5 had a similar effect to the proposition of the Cave and the Tent put forwards by ADS2. Is this building a permanent space that people inhabit freely or is it something more systematic and adaptable.

INTRASTRUCTURES, 2011

1220 X 2440

Internal appetures infilled with sheets to create space

A â&#x20AC;&#x153;standardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; sized sheet material used in construction

7. 3.

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9. 3. 1. 5.

7. 8. 4.

6. 1. 2. 1. 10.

5. 9. 4.

2. 6. 1. 2.

2. 8. 2.

Creating walls and partitions with hardware store2.elements and using no fixtures or fittings.

A table set made from one sheet of plywood. A non-consumptive table,

A section of the interior truss roof space appropriated into a platform. Maybe for sleeping in or storing things in?

The same space occupied by services.

3. MID TERM PRESENTATION

The mid term exam saw the introduction of renders or visualisations of the intrior into the project materials and in doing so it started to open up discussions about the aesthetics of the work alongside the spatial and programmatic propositions. I used this mid-term exam as an opportiunity to represent what one potential inhabitation would or could be like. At this point, I hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get began wrestling with my uncertainties surroudning desingin and intriroir that it intended to be re-designed ad infinitum. The proposal here was for a community of people who wanted to live and work in one place. I didnt see this as an exercise in coing up with an interestin program for the space. Later on I would formaise this by applying the program a few levels higher in the logical structure of the architecture. In this way I would not be proposing a program to go into the space but rather a program that supported other programs going into the space. I personally thing this is good place for architecture to operate at.

Sleeping in the ceiling.

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2440

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1:25 Section

“Unprogrammed’ perimiter

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View through to a kitchen

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1:100 Section

A communal interior below the trusses

Living and working together

3. 2440 X 2440

Less successfully in the mid terms but more so towards the final design I began to formalize the idea of designing a space from the small things into the big things. My intention here was to work upwards from the actions that would typically constitute something akin to â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;interior space makingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; to deliver a physical and logical framework that was sympathetic to these interventions.

2440 x 2440 unit module.

WORKING

STORING

COOKING

EATING

LIVING?

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Single, Double and Quadruple bay domestic inhabitations

8. STRUCTURE & SERVICES

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So far every part of the structure had been â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;part of the systemâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Totally ordered and totally controlled. There was this strange dynamic emerging that I was design a building with a very strict structure that I intended to be inhabited and intervened (this could be read as interrupted) by future occupants. A duality had already emerged structurally and materially and it kind fitted that it extend formally and functionally. One hand there were was an interior created between, under and within 14m spanning timber trusses which had a warmth and tactility to it. On the other, a more harsh steel superstructure encasing the interior spaces. In order to exploit this potential tension, I worked on making it lighter, offsetting it slightly and rotating it. Rather than adding columns externally as it were, I added them inside the columns. Instead of making it out of mass elements like the glulam beams making up the internal trusses, I wanted to make a point about the lightness so all of the members were halved in size and doubled. The rotation fo the perimeter breaks the overall order of the design but still fits into a structural logic or economy if ou will. Each joint at the perimeter was different from all the others anyway and with this 6deg rotation they all remain similarly unique.

Compound Axo showing exterior and interior frameworks. VECTORWORKS EDUCATIONAL VERSION

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top: compound perimiter joint mid: comound 3-way joint bottom: Internally increasing column cross sections

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In many ways, the logic of the section is quite similar to that of an office or large exhibition space. Up until now i had imagined that the deep truss space would allow for inhabitation by both occupants and services necessary to heat, cool light and provide water and waste amenities to the interiorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s open plan. However, this open plan is intended to be subject to subdivision / interference at some point so the question arose of how to service this space without interfering with its potential as a flexible / open plan space. The internal apertures of the truss are 1220mm high as previously noted but they allow for a potential floor to ceiling height of just over 1.4m. This hight is particular in the way that it is just below the hight where spaces are allowed to be included in GFA calculations for lettable commercial floor space. In this way, exempting this space from being included in the lettable area defends it form being exploited for commercial gain in a through regulatory measures.

Centre Pompidou, Paris

105 45 1220

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rem.

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Typical service provision in a commercial space.

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Un-inhabited interior.

Un-inhabited interior of a commerical space in Salford, UK.

Stills from Being John Malkovic

Un-inhabited truss spaces.

1:1 truss connection of non-invasive moment fixed connection

Interventions into the truss space.

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For my TS 1:1 study I prototyped a connection for a non-invasive moment fixed bracket in a timber Vierendeel truss. By this I mean a connection with no webbing or flanges so to preserve and uninterruped apperture between the members thus allowing for an easy installation of sub-structures within the truss space to create walls, floors or screens. All of the work in freeing the truss space from obstructions in order to make it as easy to inhabit as possible woud have been wasted on services. Services could easily fit through smaller appertures or apertures intersected by cross braces making the truss much more efficient and allowing it to be smaller, cheaper and lighter. So to make good on the space provided, the HVAC, water, electricity and waste services have been overprovided around the perimeter of the interior space. Here they can service the interior as a whole or be ‘tapped’ into and brought into the interior where necessary. Again following the direction of regulations and requirements, the only interior intervention provided is two toilets, two was basins and two showers. These are situated in the north east corner of the floor plan to act as ‘starting point’ for future occupations.

1:100 Truss level Plan.

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9. STATES OF CHANGE

By this point in the design process I felt like I was fighting pretty hard to not have a program. I wanted to say that there is no program because there are infinite programs. I was investing pretty heavily in Stewart Brand’s quote, “all buildings are predictions and all predictions are wrong”. But behind this stubbornness was the idea that we could occupy environments that are in a state of change just the same way that we are as occupants. It’s not about living in a construction site but its was about representing a mode of occupation that had at its core some of the similar feelings of potential and opportunity experienced when a building is halfway built. Sure, it can easily be stylized and romanticized and it can also be interpreted as a kind of laziness. It could read as something unfinished or abandoned and I want to be careful that I’m not suggesting this is how our interiors or architectures should look but I’d like to explore the potential for this being how they work. As a side note, I wrote in a post about this project once “why don’t you just live in a construction site and you can have all the things you need to build whatever you want unless what you want is an architect to design things for you and someone else to build them?

Re-working the parts not the whole.

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A grwowing sequence of inhbabitations.

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1:100 Section

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Threshold condition

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Living and Working #2

A series of plans thorugh arranging walls.

The potential of unfinished work.

A building building itself?

10. CAMPING IN A HIGH RISE

As we have done all year, we concluded our process with a series of plans and images that aim capture the qualities of an architecture.

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200523_LBROJUNCTION_PHASE1_0009.jpg

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1:50 plan showing service zones. VECTORWORKS EDUCATIONAL VERSION

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1:100 Typical Floor Plan VECTORWORKS EDUCATIONAL VERSION

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1:100 Occupied Plan VECTORWORKS EDUCATIONAL VERSION

Miles Dean ADS5 / Camping in a High-Rise Research Atlas 11.06.20

A FRAMEWORK FOR OCCUPATION / AN IFRASTRUCTURE FOR INTERVENTION